The problem is that when some people think of "gun crime", they see only GUNcrime, instead of gunCRIME.

This is a Crime problem that sometimes involves guns. Murder is the problem here, more than the weapon used. It is the INTENT, not the implement. It is also worth noting that overall crime rates are for more correlative to gun crime rates than almost anything else. Over the last decade or two, crime rates in general have been going down, and so, too have gun crime rates.

This is why efforts to limit law-abiding citizens gun ownership is ultimately inneffective. The Assault weapons ban did nothing to stop Columbine and other shootings because anyone who has determined to commit mass-murder is already immune to legal ramifications. You cannot affect people outside of the system by tightening up things inside the system. Further, the overwhelming majority of gun violence is perpetrated with illegal or stolen guns and almost never with 'assault weapons'. Since Sandy Hook, 695 people have been shot to death. (even if you exclude suicides - another conversation) that dwarfs the problem of crazed madmen. The problem has nothing really to do with the shape of the guns or the size of the magazines. These are palliative placebos.

If we are truly trying to reduce gun violence, we should be focusing our efforts squarely on the areas where we can do the most good: attacking illegal guns and closing the gun show loopholes. And frankly, I am becoming increasingly disapointed by people who are way too pre-occupied by the specifics of the sensational murder of affluent white suburbanite children while utterly ambivalent about the far more prevelant problem of poor, inner city brown kids being killed every day.

neversubmit:When I was a kid I had a pump .22 and after a heavy rain I'd go to the wash out behind the pond and kill snakes so the cows would go to the high pasture. Then kids would trade punches, the shake and call it good. Today they talk shiat and pull guns.

Unless you were a kid in the 1950s or a couple of years in the 1960 that's simply not true.since that was that last time the murder rate was this low (4.7) and the lowest in that era was 4.0 in 1957. ( FBI stats, feel free to check 'em out)

to go any lower than that you would have to go all the way back to 1910.

Simply put the argument that more guns leads to more crime is not supported by the data which shows that we have more guns than ever before, and we are approaching the lowest overall crime rates in a century

meat0918:Rapmaster2000: RickN99: FTA: . It doesn't seem so far removed from the rhetoric being spewed by the gun lobby in the wake of the Newtown massacre.

Right. The NRA recommends armed police in the schools -- that's not far at all from letting elementary school kids bring their own guns.

It made me wonder how familiar people are with police staffing levels in their community. For example, the small town where I grew up had a total of five schools (3 grade, 1 middle, 1 high) and a total of ten cops. So, they would need to increase their staffing levels by at least 50%.

My current county has 125 schools and 1269 cops, so it's roughly at the same level of staffing. How much are taxpayers willing to pay to make this police idea happen?

In my experience, they don't really care about the funding, they just want better public safety and they want it now. Just like they want better schools, better roads, and better public services in general. Funding levels are always fine. Cut more in other areas. Just don't raise their taxes to pay for it.

And then they complain about hour reductions for services they use. "I didn't mean cut THAT!"

//Rant done.

I think the NRA knew that no matter what they suggested, the administration would shoot it down (no pun intended) just because it was the NRA's recommendation. So they make a proposal -- use trained government-employed security officers/cops.

And, of course, the politicians, who are currently being protected by trained government-employed security officers (and their kids go to schools where they are being protected by trained government-employed security officers), think its a terrible, useless idea. Oh, those wacko gunnuts!

It didn't matter what the NRA recommended. Columnists/journalists still claim the gun lobby wants, for all intents and purposed, to arm elementary school kids.

ringersol:Frank N Stein: "I had a 10/22 as a kid. It was fun to shoot at cans."

I had a totally sweet Trapper Keeper.It contained my homework and the awesome-to-a-kid doodles I made on my homework.

/ about as relevant// it *was* totally sweet though/// my teachers were not amused by the doodles//// but back then you didn't get detention or expulsion for that sort of thing// not even for the drawings you probably should not have drawn

When I was a kid I had a pump .22 and after a heavy rain I'd go to the wash out behind the pond and kill snakes so the cows would go to the high pasture. Then kids would trade punches, the shake and call it good. Today they talk shiat and pull guns.

So the article points out that arming children on their way to school is "the rhetoric being spewed by the gun lobby" by linking to an article in which someone claims that the teachers in schools should be armed.

I'm not sure but I'm thinking that fighting derp with derp may be a tad counterproductive.

OK, let me take a shot at explaining this.Yes, 2 hours of violence in a movie DOES influence SOME people. The mentally weak, deranged, and ill. People that are already violent seek out those types of movies, and it's a self-feeding cycle. In fact, most people are probably influenced in some way. Some people are repulsed by it and want nothing to do with violence. But the vast majority of people are not influenced to simply go imitate what they see on the screen. This is because most people know the difference between reality and fantasy, good and bad, right and wrong. The 99.99999% of people who watch them recognize the difference between the outrageous caricatures of humans in a movie, and real humans in real life.Sure, if a bunch of guys kidnap your daughter and you have a particular set of skills, then maybe a movie would influence you to go use those skills, but otherwise, no.The Super Bowl commercial is trying to sell you a real-life product - or at the very least make you aware that it exists. The movie is not trying to convince you to go shoot people.

Agreed, they are just trying to make money by telling stories of conflict - which by the way if you have no conflict in a movie you have either a documentary or a home movie.But-It makes (along with every other violent commercial and movie you watch) violence seem more respectable or at least acceptable. For example - Even the Power Puff Girls resort to violence to save the day. Pringles chips are now blowing up grocery store aisles in commercials. Over years of visual consumption the message is hammered home that violence, even extreme violence, is acceptable.Now with the wonderful FX that are possible it looks more realistic than ever and harder than ever to differentiate it from reality.There's no one problem. It's a whole raft of problems that together get us where we are today. It's gun control, it's mental health, it's economics, it's the media and entertainment, it's a perversion of the constitution driven by capitalism, it's fear that makes people line up in front of a gun shop in CT today. It's a place that nobody could have predicted before now. It's our society which I think will start eating it's self pretty soon if it hasn't started yet.

HAMMERTOE:Thirty years ago, I used to go hunting early in the morning, stow my shotgun in my locker, and go on about my school day. The difference: Hollywood and rap music hadn't gotten into full swing yet, with the glorification of violence.

And for thirty years, violent crime in the U.S. has trended steadily downward. Therefore, increasingly graphic Hollywood films and gangster-rap music have a positive affect, and help reduce violence overall.

Only pink guns, with ribbons and pikachu dangling from the trigger guard.

I'll call:

[i135.photobucket.com image 717x269]You can't see it too well, but the metal is powdercoated a sparkly purple. Oh, yeah...that's a "My Little Pony" assault case in the front.

From the 'site that supplied the picture:

It's not a toy, it's a fully operational AR-15A2 HBAR in 5.56mm that I built for her and had powdercoated. The furniture is CavArms. The muzzlebreak is blaze orange because Federal law requires that all toy guns have the last 6mm of the barrel painted blaze orange, but there is no Federal or State law in the jurisdiction I reside in that says that real guns can't have blaze orange muzzle devices. Legal loophole and 3 years and 80K+ in legal education FTMFW.The cops I've shown it to have had kittens when they saw the muzzle break.

I'm still trying to figure out if that is hilarious or dangerous. Probably both.

jaytkay:Conservative logic again:"Adam Lanza would have killed twenty kids with a candlestick if he couldn't get a gun."

Or, he could have bought a case cutter (the weapon of choice on 9/11) or a few sacks of fertilizer and a couple of quarts of motor oil (the weapon of choice in OKC) and done a hell of a lot more damage.

You quite simply cannot eliminate all risk. If somebody wants to cause mayhem, they will. All you can do is try to mitigate the damage by ensuring that the badguys(tm) get put down as quickly as possible.

Everybody seems to get POed at the suggestion of arming such teachers that want to be armed and that meet, say, the training standards in place for police officers. I keep asking folks who oppose such an idea "If you can't trust your child's teacher with a gun, WHY ARE YOU TRUSTING THEM WITH YOUR CHILD?!?!?" They mostly just look at me like I'm nuts.

Carn:First, by being a monetary reminder to everyone forced to carry it to observe their safety precautions at all times. Now, I know some of you are responsible gun owners and already do this, but some people aren't. Second, we're not necessarily trying to prevent crime directly, but imagine your acquaintance or your distant cousin wants to buy a spare gun off you "for protection". If you have liability insurance on that sucker and you're unsure of his motives, you ought to think twice about it. Maybe he's a meth head and is gonna run off and mug somebody or try to rob a convenience store. Previously, what do you care? You're legally allowed to sell it to him and he's the criminal if he commits a crime. But now you've got skin in the game.

These hypotheticals are not really the source of most guns used in gun crimes.

Also, once you complete a bill of sale, you are no longer responsible for the gun, insurance or no. Same as with liability insurance on an auto that you sell to your idiot second cousin. If he plows into a family of 6 the day after you sell him your old beater, so long as you have a completed bill of sale, you cannot be held responsible, and your liability insurance is not applicable.

Considering that very few (if any) of these mass shooters had been officially diagnosed with anything by anyone, how would this massive, expensive additional bueracracy reduce the rate of mass murdering madmen?

In the old timey days when my dad was in school kids took guns in on a semi-regular basis. If the guys were going shooting/hunting after school they'd ride their bikes to school with a rifle slung over a shoulder. Once at school they'd check the gun in with the principles office and get it back after class. And yet somehow with this going on there wasn't a single shooting at his school. The school never panicked and went on lock down expelling all the students involved. This was off in BFE Montana.

I'm not going to draw any conclusions from this riveting tale so I'll just finish with the story of the time so and so tied an onion to his belt. Which was the style at the time...........

OK, let me take a shot at explaining this.Yes, 2 hours of violence in a movie DOES influence SOME people. The mentally weak, deranged, and ill. People that are already violent seek out those types of movies, and it's a self-feeding cycle. In fact, most people are probably influenced in some way. Some people are repulsed by it and want nothing to do with violence. But the vast majority of people are not influenced to simply go imitate what they see on the screen. This is because most people know the difference between reality and fantasy, good and bad, right and wrong. The 99.99999% of people who watch them recognize the difference between the outrageous caricatures of humans in a movie, and real humans in real life.Sure, if a bunch of guys kidnap your daughter and you have a particular set of skills, then maybe a movie would influence you to go use those skills, but otherwise, no.The Super Bowl commercial is trying to sell you a real-life product - or at the very least make you aware that it exists. The movie is not trying to convince you to go shoot people.

After listening to NPR on my way to lunch today I've come to the conclusion that the world we live in now is to be filled with passionate people repeating (at brain-washing rapidity) "it's just wrong to have such a violence-loving society" (It's just wrong to have so many guns. It's just wrong to like guns so much. It's just wrong to have violent video games. etc.)

So, the anti-gun crowd has finally acknowledged that there are no logical arguments for new gun laws (i.e. nothing will stop a nutjob from stealing his mom's guns and killing kids), so now they are trying the "it's just wrong" method of touchy-feely pyscho-babble brainwashing to get rid of guns.

Carn:Sticky Hands: neversubmit: When I was a kid I had a pump .22 and after a heavy rain I'd go to the wash out behind the pond and kill snakes so the cows would go to the high pasture. Then kids would trade punches, the shake and call it good. Today they talk shiat and pull guns.

Unless you were a kid in the 1950s or a couple of years in the 1960 that's simply not true.since that was that last time the murder rate was this low (4.7) and the lowest in that era was 4.0 in 1957. ( FBI stats, feel free to check 'em out)

to go any lower than that you would have to go all the way back to 1910.

Simply put the argument that more guns leads to more crime is not supported by the data which shows that we have more guns than ever before, and we are approaching the lowest overall crime rates in a century

That probably has nothing to do with our record incarceration rates, no? Also, being number one in the world in gun murders per capita, we should be proud of that too right?

It might, it might not, it might have to do with massive amounts of cheap entertainment that keep angry young men off the streets. It might have to do with legalized abortion, it might have to do with the banning of leaded gas.

however, what we DO know is the following: states with less strict gun control have lower firearm murder rates than states with more strict gun control.

and: There are more guns in the USA now than ever before, and it is likely that there are more guns that people in the USA. Yet the murder rate is declining, and across the country as a whole the gun murder rate has held steady at about ~75% of all homicides.

Those are right in line with Switzerland for percentage of murders committed by firearms.

But they have a murder rate of 0.7 which is a little more that half the rate of the unarmed UK.

Nothing good will happen until the ACLU gets shut down and the nutjobs get locked up. I know you can make plastique out of salt and petroleum jelly and samurai swords sell for under $30 and if you locked yourself in a room full of 6 year olds and a twenty something education major there wouldn't be anything there to stop a maniac like Holmes or Loughner or Lanza. If you went with the plastique you wouldn't even have to get inside the school.

xalres:Wadded Beef: Alas, not happening with all the insecurity, fear and hate coming from the wingnut gun-owners, Subby.

They're so deep in denial they refuse to have an intellectually honest conversation about the topic or even acknowledge that we have a problem with gun violence in this country.

A problem that1) is already in steep decline2)has almost nothing to do with assault riles and high capacity magazines, which is where essentially all the discussion is focused.Anecdotes3)still has MANY vectors of adressing it left besides declawing the proles.

Vegan Meat Popsicle:Frank N Stein: jaytkay: An armed society is a polite society. Like the south side of Chicago, for example.

Well, when you have measures the prohibit poor people from legally purchasing guns, that leaves only the cops and bad guys (sometimes there's little distinction between to two) who own firearms.

Why do you support prohibiting poor black people from legally purchasing firearms?

/South Side resident, BTW

See? The only solution to gun violence is guns. Why can't people understand that?

If you're not living with a deadly weapon perpetually strapped to your side and a gnawing suspicion of everyone around you in the back of your brain, you're just not free. That feeling of paranoia is just there to let you know the second amendment is working as intended!

Hooray freedumb!

Hooray hyperbole!! Is there any discussion that it can't contribute to?

Frank N Stein:jaytkay: An armed society is a polite society. Like the south side of Chicago, for example.

Well, when you have measures the prohibit poor people from legally purchasing guns, that leaves only the cops and bad guys (sometimes there's little distinction between to two) who own firearms.

Why do you support prohibiting poor black people from legally purchasing firearms?

/South Side resident, BTW

See? The only solution to gun violence is guns. Why can't people understand that?

If you're not living with a deadly weapon perpetually strapped to your side and a gnawing suspicion of everyone around you in the back of your brain, you're just not free. That feeling of paranoia is just there to let you know the second amendment is working as intended!

moothemagiccow:neversubmit: When I was a kid I had a pump .22 and after a heavy rain I'd go to the wash out behind the pond and kill snakes so the cows would go to the high pasture. Then kids would trade punches, the shake and call it good. Today they talk shiat and pull guns.

Ahh, old people. Murder is just brand spanking new, isn't it?

Kids killing other kids at school with firearms? Yes, that is relatively new.

/there were plenty of guns in back windows in the school parking lot in my hometown during hunting season//and even not during hunting season...///shockingly enough, no school shootings ever happened there.

Rapmaster2000:RickN99: FTA: . It doesn't seem so far removed from the rhetoric being spewed by the gun lobby in the wake of the Newtown massacre.

Right. The NRA recommends armed police in the schools -- that's not far at all from letting elementary school kids bring their own guns.

It made me wonder how familiar people are with police staffing levels in their community. For example, the small town where I grew up had a total of five schools (3 grade, 1 middle, 1 high) and a total of ten cops. So, they would need to increase their staffing levels by at least 50%.

My current county has 125 schools and 1269 cops, so it's roughly at the same level of staffing. How much are taxpayers willing to pay to make this police idea happen?

In my experience, they don't really care about the funding, they just want better public safety and they want it now. Just like they want better schools, better roads, and better public services in general. Funding levels are always fine. Cut more in other areas. Just don't raise their taxes to pay for it.

And then they complain about hour reductions for services they use. "I didn't mean cut THAT!"

CSB:I saw Art Spiegleman speak at a university oh, 10 or so years ago now. I was on the student side of the committee that brought him in (although not an important part) so I got to see some of the behind the scenes back and forth.

Spiegleman had it written into his contract that he was 100% allowed to smoke anywhere on campus while he was presenting. During his 1 hour speech, he stood on stage in a packed aditorium and smoked at an alarming rate, using one cigarette to light the next. by the end of the speech, his ashtray - sitting in the podium - had an enormous pile of butts.

He mentioned during his speech that "as I chain smoker in New York I'm normally on house arrest, so it's really nice to be able to get out and about here in the south".

After the speech, we herded him to the Q&A reception. At which he continued to smoke at a ferocious pace, only in a much smaller and more enclosed room. To this day, I'm not sure where he kept pulling the cigarettes from - it was like watching a magic trick. The man must have smoked 3 or 4 packs in 3 or so hours, and the supply never ran out.

After seeing this, I've always thought - as a smoker - that I'll finally know that I've "made it" when, like Art Spiegleman, I can insist in my contract that I can smoke anywhere I want, yet people still want me to come speak bad enough that they'll honor that sort of clause.

I mean, just how retarded are these gun grabbers? Do you honestly think calling people in their twenties "kids" is helping the situation? How about giving them responsibilities, jobs, and a reason to live? How about not pigeonholing them into perpetual adolescence?

Talk about missing the point. Then again, you're a conservative, so it's kind of a given.

I had a totally sweet Trapper Keeper.It contained my homework and the awesome-to-a-kid doodles I made on my homework.

/ about as relevant// it *was* totally sweet though/// my teachers were not amused by the doodles//// but back then you didn't get detention or expulsion for that sort of thing// not even for the drawings you probably should not have drawn

I mean, just how retarded are these gun grabbers? Do you honestly think calling people in their twenties "kids" is helping the situation? How about giving them responsibilities, jobs, and a reason to live? How about not pigeonholing them into perpetual adolescence?

muck4doo:Hipsters are cool with stripping away your rights, as long as a Democrat is doing it.

My gf's brother is uber hipster. Last month when we went out to dinner for her family's Christmas party, me and the old lady's cousins were exchanging range and hunting stories. While left out, the hipster brother was interested in going to the range (as he's never shot a gun before). Moral of the story, I believe, is that some people just don't have experience with guns, so the issue is distant and simplistic.

/It was also funny when we were in the parking lot of the restaurant smoking and her cousin brought out his AR-15 from the back seat of his car for him to see.